Erythropoietin (hereinafter abbreviated as EPO) is a glycoprotein hormone that is essential for erythrocyte hematopoiesis. It is normally secreted from the kidneys and promotes production of erythrocytes by acting on erythrocyte stem cells present in bone marrow. In diseases presenting with a decrease in intrinsic EPO production (such as chronic renal failure), since erythrocyte production decreases and symptoms of anemia are exhibited, treatment is provided in the form of replacement therapy using gene-recombinant human EPO. However, this gene-recombinant human EPO has been indicated as having shortcomings such as being a biological preparation and associated with expensive health care costs, having poor convenience due to being an injection and having antigenicity.
On the other hand, compounds such as 4-hydroxypyrimidine-5-carboxamide derivatives (see Patent Documents 1 to 3) and 5-hydroxypyrimidine-4-carboxamide derivatives (see Patent Documents 4 to 8) are known to be low molecular weight EPO inducers.